Zynga Casuals really should be named "Fashionable Gamers", they will only play games once it's socially accepted and peeking. After that they are done and aren't looking for the next game. Anyone with vision and paid well should know this. This is your Wii crowd, your Kinect Crowd. This isn't their hobby, it's their fad and they don't have continuous sales.

That said, one post here hit the nail to. Farmville played out like a hardcore game, the investment time becomes too much as it goes. For a fashion crowd it needed to top out to a point they can still do a little and feel good about themselves. That was their end game, as in "game over man".

Ozmodan wrote on Oct 11, 2012, 10:50:So much for the big deal about facebook games. People have short attention spans, so what is hot today is cold tomorrow. If you can't keep RIPPING OFF new games constantly you will not be here tomorrow.

Fixed.

"The worst of it all is i used to ENJOY getting excited for big titles like this, but these publishers just keep ruining my love for this wonderful hobby with their endless fuckery." - Sempai

I don't think casual games are a dead genre, nor do I think they are necessarily bad; but they target a very different audience. My wife is probably the prime demographic for casual games - a stay at home mom who wants a 5-15 minute distraction that can be played and put down at any time. At the same time, the "early Farmville" gave you the ability to constantly grow your farm day after day, and then if you wanted the "really special" items you could drop $2 and get a pink pig.

My wife probably spent $50 over a few months on it. But at some point it just became overwhelming. You had to have dozens of super active Farmville friends to make any progress, which is unlikely, so now you were forced to pay real money to make progress.

I think casual games need to know their role - entertain people while they are procrastinating. Yes there is money to be made in them, but not much; so you need to be lean. Think of the Apple App Store, you aren't seeing dozens of $59.99 titles out there, you make money by being a 2-3 man shop working out of your garage and selling a million copies of a $3 game.

NegaDeath wrote on Oct 11, 2012, 11:18:But but but companies like Zynga were the future!

It's all anyone talked about in 2010 GDC.

Of course, we can't dance on the grave of casual games. Zynga's issue isn't that they make stupid casual games, it's that they make stupid casual Facebook games, which require a laptop or desktop, and most people are playing their stupid, casual games on their phone or tablet.

Essentially, they screwed up by not realizing that traditional PC gaming was not the future of casual gaming. Casual gaming is still enormous, but it's not on PCs.

The really sad thing is that Soren Johnson and Brian Reynolds are still there. Two of the greatest Civ minds...

So much for the big deal about facebook games. People have short attention spans, so what is hot today is cold tomorrow. If you can't keep churning out new games constantly you will not be here tomorrow.